asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What is their assessment of the growth of grid computing techniques and innovations in the United Kingdom compared to that in other countries; and whether they have any proposals for further measures to expand these activities within government bodies and universities. [HL4625]

The UK has a strong grid-computing community in terms of both technology development and adoption. This community has benefited from the investments made through the e-science research programme which ran from 2001 to 2007 and was funded by the research councils and the then DTI.

Examples of adoption in the UK can be seen in numerous industries including finance, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and retail.

A national grid service (NGS) has been developed with the main support for the NGS currently provided through the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), supported by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) currently provides support to this service via JISC and has contributed 50 per cent of the costs for the two-year period 2007-09. It is also now considering the role that the NGS can have in enabling leading research groups to carry out high-quality research in the UK.

The current focus of the Technology Strategy Board- funded Grid Computing Now! Knowledge Transfer Network is on specific issues including green IT and software licensing and how these impact on the public sector in particular.

The Technology Strategy Board is also currently developing a UK technology strategy for information and communication technologies, which will cover grid computing among other technologies, methodologies and models.